How far we’ve come since Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin and famously demanded: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Today, President Barack Obama is singing serenades to communism.

While in Argentina last week, America’s apologizer in chief lamented: “So often in the past there has been a division between left and right, between capitalists and communists or socialists, and especially in the Americas, that’s been a big debate. Oh, you know, you’re a capitalist Yankee dog, and oh, you know, you’re some crazy communist that’s going to take away everybody’s property.

“Those are interesting intellectual arguments, but I think for your generation, you should be practical and just choose from what works. You don’t have to worry about whether it really fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory. You should just decide what works.”

What works? Have we arrived at a new ideological low that our president feels compelled to defend the evils of communism, a system that left people living under it — from the Soviet Union to China and East Germany to Cuba — in abject poverty, declining health and without the most basic of human rights?

What about the 200 million or more people who were killed after Big Brother decided what worked for them? Did rulers like Mao and Stalin just get a little carried away?

The enduring lesson of the 20th century, as Milton Friedman often reminded us, is that communism, socialism, Marxism, or whatever “ism” you want to call it, is an abject failure that degrades human dignity and progress. At least, Obama has finally fessed up to what Bernie Sanders would never admit, that communism and socialism are flip sides of the same coin.